The US and others agreed to 'secret' exemptions for Iran after the nuclear deal: report

An Iranian flag flutters in front of the IAEA
headquarters in ViennaThomson
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and its negotiating
partners agreed "in secret" to allow Iran to evade some
restrictions in last year's landmark nuclear agreement in order
to meet the deadline for it to start getting relief from economic
sanctions, according to a report reviewed by Reuters.

The report is to be published on Thursday by the Washington-based
Institute for Science and International Security, said the think
tank’s president David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector
and co-author of the report. It is based on information provided
by several officials of governments involved in the negotiations,
who Albright declined to identify.

Reuters could not independently verify the report's assertions.

"The exemptions or loopholes are happening in secret, and it
appears that they favor Iran," Albright said.

Among the exemptions were two that allowed Iran to exceed the
deal's limits on how much low-enriched uranium (LEU) it can keep
in its nuclear facilities, the report said. LEU can be purified
into highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium.

The exemptions, the report said, were approved by the joint
commission the deal created to oversee implementation of the
accord. The commission is comprised of the United States and its
negotiating partners -- called the P5+1 -- and Iran.

One senior "knowledgeable" official was cited by the report as
saying that if the joint commission had not acted to create these
exemptions, some of Iran’s nuclear facilities would not have been
in compliance with the deal by Jan. 16, the deadline for the
beginning of the lifting of sanctions.

The U.S. administration has said that the world powers that
negotiated the accord -- the United States, Russia, China,
Britain, France and Germany -- made no secret arrangements.

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said
the joint commission and its role were "not secret." He did not
address the report's assertions of exemptions.

Diplomats at the United Nations for the other P5+1 countries did
not respond to Reuters' requests for comment on the report.

The report's assertions are likely to anger critics of the
nuclear deal. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has
vowed to renegotiate the agreement if he's elected, while
Democrat Hillary Clinton supports the accord.

Albright said the exceptions risked setting precedents that Iran
could use to seek additional waivers.

Albright served as an inspector with the U.N. International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team that investigated former Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program.

While Albright has neither endorsed nor denounced the overall
agreement, he has expressed concern over what he considers
potential flaws in the nuclear deal, including the expiration of
key limitations on Iran's nuclear work in 10-15 years.

Exemptions on uranium, "hot cells"

The administration of President Barack Obama informed Congress of
the exemptions on Jan. 16, said the report. Albright said the
exemptions, which have not been made public, were detailed in
confidential documents sent to Capitol Hill that day -- after the
exemptions had already been granted.

The White House official said the administration had briefed
Congress "frequently and comprehensively" on the joint
commission's work.

Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, a leading critic of the Iran
deal and a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, told Reuters in an email: "I was not aware nor did I
receive any briefing (on the exemptions).”

As part of the concessions that allowed Iran to exceed uranium
limits, the joint commission agreed to exempt unknown
quantities of 3.5 percent LEU contained in liquid, solid and
sludge wastes stored at Iranian nuclear facilities, according to
the report. The agreement restricts Iran to stockpiling only
300 kg of 3.5 percent LEU.

The commission approved a second exemption for an unknown
quantity of near 20 percent LEU in "lab contaminant" that was
determined to be unrecoverable, the report said. The nuclear
agreement requires Iran to fabricate all such LEU into research
reactor fuel.

If the total amount of excess LEU Iran possesses is unknown, it
is impossible to know how much weapons-grade uranium it could
yield, experts said.

The draft report said the joint commission also agreed to allow
Iran to keep operating 19 radiation containment chambers larger
than the accord set. These so-called "hot cells" are used for
handling radioactive material but can be "misused for secret,
mostly small-scale plutonium separation efforts," said the
report. Plutonium is another nuclear weapons fuel.

The deal allowed Iran to meet a 130-tonne limit on heavy water
produced at its Arak facility by selling its excess stock on the
open market. But with no buyer available, the joint commission
helped Tehran meet the sanctions relief deadline by allowing it
to send 50 tonnes of the material -- which can be used in nuclear
weapons production -- to Oman, where it was stored under Iranian
control, the report said.

The shipment to Oman of the heavy water that can be used in
nuclear weapons production has already been reported. Albright's
report made the new assertion that the joint committee had
approved this concession.

(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; editing by John Walcott and Stuart
Grudgings)

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